Famous for his impassioned portrayals of New York as much as for his neurosis, Woody Allen has turned his director’s eye to Barcelona, and the city’s never looked more romantic.

When Woody Allen announced he’d be making his first film in Spain, you can bet the Spanish tourist board was delighted. Promising it to be a “love letter to Barcelona and from Barcelona to the world”, it seemed like the legendary filmmaker was determined to do for the Catalan city what his 1979 black-and-white classic Manhattan did for his native New York. In other words, romanticise what is already one of the world’s most romantic destinations.

As it turns out, Vicky Cristina Barcelona is more than just an affectionate tribute to the eponymous city. The tale of two American tourists – Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and Cristina (Scarlett Johansson) – who become romantically entangled with roguish painter Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem) after he suggests a threesome, it’s arguably one of Allen’s freshest films in years. Recently released to ecstatic reviews in the US, it looks set to be his most commercially successful project there since the Oscar-laden Hannah and Her Sisters two decades ago.

For Allen, following a trio of films set in the UK – Match Point, Scoop and Cassandra’s Dream – coming to Spain was a case of serendipity. He only considered the prospect when Spanish company Mediapro called him to see if he’d be interested in making a movie in Barcelona. “I said, ‘Sure! I love Spain. I love Barcelona. My wife and my children would love to spend the summer there. That would be very pleasurable for them’,” he recalls. “So I wrote something that I could shoot in Barcelona. It was a golden opportunity for me, because I happen to have a particular fondness for a number of cities in Spain, and Barcelona is one of my favourites.”

Accompanied by his family – wife Soon-Yi Previn and their daughters Bechet and Manzie – it’s little wonder that a cultured creature like Allen was drawn to a city famous for its art and architecture. “It’s a very exciting city,” he acknowledges, “and a very cosmopolitan city.” A place he’d been to several times before, having toured there with his jazz band, it seemed even the weather was ideal when he arrived in July 2007 to shoot the film. “We had a particularly cool summer, so the temperature was never punishing. I couldn’t ask for a better working situation. It was just lovely. I loved living there.”

Certainly such a pleasant working environment inspired the 73 year-old Allen to craft one of the more overtly romantic films of his career. “I made it romantic because I wanted the tragic part of it to sneak up on you,” he claims. “I wanted you to enjoy a romantic story and see a romance between people, and I wanted some laughs in the movie, but at the end of the movie I wanted there to be a feeling of rueful sadness.” Indeed as “things start to disintegrate in a very complicated way” for the characters, it ultimately recalls the atmosphere of one of Allen’s more mature works, Husbands and Wives.

Partly this comes from the film’s third act, where the spirited Cristina gets sucked into a ménage à trois with Juan Antonio and his manic-depressive ex-wife, Maria Elena (played by Penelope Cruz), a woman he can neither live with nor without. “Penelope and Javier play two artists who are crazed and have a larger-than-life view of things,” explains Allen. “But in real life, most of us could never handle anything like that. It’s hard enough to have a relationship that can work out with one person, but with two, it becomes geometrically fatal.”

Read the full interview in our October 2008 edition.